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Appliance promises XML security
Westbridge Technology moved to quell criticism of Web services security techniques with last week's unveiling of its XA2500 XML Firewall Appliance. Officials at the Mountain View, Calif. firm said the appliance can provide comprehensive security and monitoring for XML Web services.
The new XA2500 appliance runs the firm's flagship Westbridge XML Message Server (XMS) enterprise software, officials said.
Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Waltham, Mass.-based consulting firm, said hardware-based security systems could significantly boost Web services security. Bloomberg said that to date, existing network firewalls have had difficulties in successfully overcoming the "significant security challenges" posed by XML and Web services technologies. Hardware-based security appliances coupled with the firewalls could significantly improve security, Bloomberg said.
Westbridge officials said the new appliance can be dropped into an XML network after minutes of set-up work. The new system is said to support a variety of security techniques, including authentication, access control, encryption, decryption, signing, signature verification, content filtering, logging and alerting. The system can also provide protection against a range of malicious attacks against XML and Web services interfaces.
The rack-mountable, dual-CPU, 2.4 GHz XA2500 appliance is currently shipping.
About the Author
Mike Bucken is former Editor-in-Chief of Application Development Trends magazine.